Who Saved the Scrolls: Prague

Prague

In the years after the War a legend grew up that the Nazis had planned to create a â€˜museum to an extinct raceâ€™.Â This has little foundation in fact.Â We do know, however, that a devout band of Jews from Pragueâ€™s Jewish community worked to bring artefacts and Jewish possessions of all kinds to what had become the Central Jewish Museum in Prague.Â Here they laboured under appalling conditions to preserve what little remained of Jewish communities, previously at the mercy of vandals and plunderers.Â This Jewish initiative was directly responsible for the subsequent conservation of the Scrolls.

It was hoped by the Jewish community that these treasures would be protected and might one day return to their original homes.Â All the curators at the Museum were eventually transported to Terezin and Auschwitz.Â Only two survived, and the Czech Jewish community after the war was too depleted to be able to care for them.Â Their legacy was the catalogue of the vast collection in the Museum, eventually to become the Jewish Museum of Prague.

This first initiative in keeping safe 1,564 Scrolls of the Law was taken Â by London Jews who purchased them from the Communist government and took them back into Jewish hands at Westminster Synagogue.

Who Saved Them: Prague

Salomon Hugo Lieben

(1881-1942)

Founder of the Jewish Museum in Prague in 1906. He had retired from his post at the Museum to work as Head of the Prague Burial Society, but became involved again when the plan to establish the Central Jewish Museum was being discussed and put into practice.

Dr.Karel Stein

(1906-1961)

Chairman of the Department of Provincial Affairs at the Prague Jewish Community and probably author of the idea of gathering all the objects from Bohemian and Moravian synagogues and saving them in Prague. He was the only community leader to survive the war and became the Head of the Prague Jewish Community after the war. In 1949 he moved to Israel.

Dr.Tobias Jakobovits

(1887-1944)

The former Librarian of the Prague Jewish Community became the Scientific Head of the Central Jewish Museum in Prague. Together with Lieben he co-curated the wartime exhibition of rare prints and manuscripts.

Alfred Engel

(1881-1944)

Former curator of the Central Jewish Museum for Moravia and Silesia in Mikulov (Nikolsburg), whose contents were moved first in May 1938 to Brno and then in May 1942 to Prague, where they became a major component of the Central Jewish Museum with Engel as one of its curators.

Frantisek Zelenka

(1904-1944)

An architect and noted theatrical designer. He was recruited to help implement the plan once the stream of artefacts began to arrive. He was responsible for the artistic design of the war-time exhibitions although they were not intended to be seen by the general public.

Hana Volavkova

(1904-1985)

The only curator at the Central Jewish Museum who survived the war. She saved the Museum in the after-war chaos, becoming its Director under the Communist regime in 1950. Being an art historian, she assisted Josef PolÃ¡k in preparing an exhibition in 1943 on the history of the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia and completed an exhibition about Prague Jews in 1944 after PolÃ¡k had been arrested and Jakobovits and most of the staff deported. After 1945, she fought to keep the collections intact, but the Communist regime allowed the sale of some items, leading to Westminster Synagogueâ€™s acquisition of the Scrolls.

Frantisek Weidmann

(1910-1944)

Chairman of the Prague Jewish Community, he represented it on behalf of the Zentralstelle fÃ¼r jÃ¼dische Auswanderung and led the negotiations regarding the establishment of the Central Jewish Museum. He hired Josef PolÃ¡k to become the museum specialist of the CJM.

Josef Polak

(1886-1945)

Professional museologist and former Director of the State Museum in Kosice. He was appointed to take charge of the cataloguing operation for the incoming mass of artefacts. He established the meticulous rules & procedures that ensured consistent methodology even as members of museum staff were being deported and replaced.